I had a couple of ideas for fixing freeport. Currently, lots of people complain about boats being stored in freeports, tames being stored, the raft city, etc. This seems to be a universal gripe of the community looking at any form of social media related to the game (including official discord). The following are my ideas for a freeport redesign.
1) There is a maximum company BOAT limit of 2 in a freeport tile. This would allow people to still go to freeport to hire NPCs, or make sloops/rafts for beginning, or simply parking their boat overnight if they find themselves far from home after a powerstone journey. This would prevent companies from storing their entire fleet in a freeport indefinitely, and would limit the number of raft-farming-villages. Yes, they could just have 5 alt companies storing boats in all of them, but at least it's a slight more pain in the ass to do that.
2) There is a maximum company TAME limit of 20. This lets people recruit 10 NPCs, and also allows for wiggle room should they want to store a few breeding pairs of animals or have a few cats for farming chitin. This would prevent companies from having 50 cats on the shores, and would prevent companies from storing tens of combat tames there for griefing nearby tiles.
3)And lastly, an overweight boat (even green anchored) has 3 minutes to lighten its load before it begins to auto-sink. It really, reallly should be possible for the coding to ignore non-company/non-ally players and tames and ignore their weight. (Just like enemies don't count towards crew limit.) This would eliminate the mass stockpiling of resources and materials on rafts that is being done all throughout freeports. If you wanted to take it a step farther, you could even disallow the placement of Large Wood Signposts (billboards) and crop plots.
#MakeAtlasGreatAgain

I'm posting this suggestion that a critical change that could help the progress of smaller companies, and help make the game more fun in general.
Currently no one knows if the Freeport settings on live are on purpose or an accident.
Tames, last 8 days in the Freeport, only requiring that you render them in, and feed them to keep them pretty safe, other than players trying to gather wild Freeport animals to kill them. Mine have been safe at least. You can keep anything on their inventory safely essentially saving your progress in the game.
Ships in the Freeport, at first seems unmanageable to keep them floating until you increase resistance levels, my brig at 220% resist has been fine, and would take about 16hours to sink.
So currently if you dont want a claim you can manage keeping everything besides a farm in the freeports.
Saving my progress this way, knowing other players cant ruin it has been FUN.
Knowing that if I steal something cool, or do something difficult in the game, I can save it.
I cant be online for 9 hours everyday to keep a claim.
This is the only way I can play atm as a small company, there are still huge advantages to having a claim like infinite non decaying ship storage, so that you can have more than one or two ships.
So what I'm proposing is that you make the Freeport more of a sanctuary for small companies. Introduce a Freeport bank npc that can hold like 25 slots, no weight limit, for small companies. Do not link the bank npc together, we dont want people teleporting resources across the atlas. All this would be is a small cache of items that is personal to each pathfinder, and has nothing to do with the company. Not enough to save everything but enough to pick what's important to you to save.
You have already introduced a nice trading, and shop system, which has little merit to small companies that have no where safe to keep their items, except for Freeport tames right now.
I do like the settler system, however big companies aren't struggling with upkeep, so while they probably wont mind having settlers, the settlers arent of much value, so there's not much incentive to protect their stuff on your island, also bigger companies will just push that you merge with them rather than be your own company, while they cant MAKE you do this, they CAN however, evict you and wipe all your progress.
However this small personal Freeport bank could fix alot for solo/small company players allowing them to do buisiness with big companies without fear that the big company will decide to wipe all their progress.
I LOVE YOUR GAME, and I hope you can consider a Freeport bank a possibility for its future. That way each fight/ battle doesnt have to end in someone wanting to quit, or realizing big companies are the only way to play it at all.

I bought 2 crew mates on a freeport today. My friend is also near me. Spawned 2 and wanted to look at them and how they look. Went close to them and crashed. My buddy also tried the same thing and crashed. We managed to bring them near the ship with whistle and we needed them on board so we tried to go near them and we did without crashing. After pressing E crashed the game again. Which crashed my game in water and i got killed from sharks my body also got deleted. And lost near 500 GOLD. We are not gonna hire any crew till this gets fixed. Please look into it.

My friend and me just made a ship yesterday and anchored it in a freeport at night.
When i woke up i got the message that my schooner was sunk. I can still see it on the water (half underwater) and can see that no planks were broken... Are we not supposed to park overnight in freeports anymore? I saw plenty of other schooners and brigs parked closeby...

Every attempt to cross the region wall into the L8 East Equatorial Freeport region results in a message saying "Travel Failed, Unable To Start Transfer," and your ship begins to sail into empty waters where it shows there should be islands.

Yesterday I drove with my ship (a schooner) to the freeport in L12. Today I logged in and it was completly destroyed. I was offline for around 8hours. Can a brand new ship decay within this short amount of time or is there another way my ship could have been sunk? I also noticed some bug reports here that say that ships can be randomly detroyed threw a bug.
Thank you for your support!

The V.O.C trading company runs a marketplace in grid E4 (EU PvP server). You can find our Goods and Wares stall on the beach next to the Freeport harbor of the Southern island in E4.
We currently sell (for gold at the marketplace)
- Seeds (wheat, pepper etc)
- Ship parts (large speed sails)
- Personal Weapons and ammo
- Ship/base items (preservation bags, diving attachments, water barrels)
- Cooking items (grills, water barrels)
- Taming gear (saddles up to tier 3)
- Vegetables (wheat, rice, chilli etc)
- Personal buffs (rum, beer)
And much more (no tames atm btw).
Feel free to drop by and look at our wares on display (items can be sold out of course). However we are willing to craft or provide stuff on demand for gold or resources of our interest.
If you want to contact us, please reply in this thread so we can arrange a transaction.

Ok so I've seen such mixed opinions on whether your allowed to keep things on tames in a Freeport.
I feel like they've balanced the freeports already, so why would it be unintentional that tames have a 7 day claim timer?
Also a side note, you can store items in player shops, and your inventory is safe when you log out in a Freeport.
But alot of players I talk to think this is exploiting/cheating, WHY?
I do think an actual player bank would be a better way to go, the tame storage feels a little weird and could possibly clutter freeports too much, if the player base grows.

Player Shops
NPC Crewmates
Cosmetics
New Players
Meet/Hire Player Crewmates
Resources
All of the above are reasons why the Accelerated Ship Decay should be delayed in Freeport Regions. From the moment you enter a Freeport Region, your ship begins to take a percent amount of damage every 10 or so minutes. My Brig was at full HP on all planks before entering the Freeport Region. By the time I made it to the Freeport island and anchored, my Brig had taken 400 points of damage on ALL hull planks. If players are going to be going to Freeport regions more often to buy and sell items and Player Shops, buy cosmetics for their ships, hire crew members and meet new players... they should not be forced to leave the Freeport region ASAP. The accelerated ship decay should START roughly an hour or two after entering a Freeport Region.
That being said...
I understand why there is Accelerated Ship Decay in Freeport Regions. This is to reduce lag and reduce clutter in these Freeport Regions. Players should not be clogging the place up with ships and campfires and bodies lying around everywhere, like we saw on Day 1. But if we are to be visiting Freeport towns more often because of the new content coming, like player shops... we should not be immediately penalized for entering these regions.
Alternatively... @Argh!
Pay mooring fees to anchor in a Freeport... an hourly (gold) rate allows for ﻿(an amount of time) in the Fre﻿eport. ﻿﻿﻿If you need to stay overnight due to unforeseen circumstance you will not return to a scuttled ship as long as you either prepay the "Dock Purser" or have the funds in a resource box on your ship -- Also limit this to any ship above the Ramshackle Sloop...

Goal Accomplished. Free-Port Shops (Player Ran) with actual item/gold price setting, to be put in Free-Ports come Feb.
Good evening,
As the game continues to combine many facets from Ark and EvE Online many a question has cropped up regarding an Auction House. I am personally in the party that suggests an Auction house is created in the game, so I have taken the time to create this poll. There are a few options so first allow me to explain what an Auction House is for those that may have not played MMORPG's, then follow it up with choice descriptions. Auction House
An Auction House or in this case Marketplace, is a tool that players may use to buy/sell/trade goods they've crafted/gathered/plundered. Generally an Auction House is not filled with "Dev Goods", and everything on the Auction House comes directly from the work of another player. Players are able to set price for the item they're selling, or ask for a specific number of items in return. Here I will list some common items that may be traded.
Seller 1
1,000 Fiber
(Asking Price) - 5 Gold Pieces Seller 2
500 Metal
(Asking Price) - 15 Gold Pieces Seller 3
100 Stone Foundations
(Asking Price) - 100 Gold Pieces Seller 4
100 Seeds
(Asking Price) - 200 Alloy In general buyers will find said items and make a purchase, thus instantly receiving the item into their inventory or a predetermined box, such as a Mailbox. In our case, we would need to have a mailbox of sorts. Or a "Pirate" near the Marketplace holding onto our bought and sold items so that we may pick them up. Or have a build structure known as a AH House box that is Pin-Coded to exchanged goods.
Now I will discuss the options at hand.
1. Option 1. A Marketplace is added to all Freeports, connecting all Freeports to eachother.
This option would add the classic Auction House experience, such as World of Warcraft. Where the entire server is connected and able to buy/sell/trade goods. This allows players from the North/South/East/West to access goods they would other wise have to travel lengths to get. Overall, this experience allows for trade, however often times ends up inflated as goods become easier to acquire.
2. Option 2. A Marketplace isn't added to the game, and the game remains in its current state.
This option completely eliminates the idea of an Auction House, keeping the game as it is. The only trade in the game is single, out in the field player to player interactions. Decent enough for survival games, but lacking for MMORPG games.
3. Option 3. A Marketplace is added to the game, however Freeports are not connected, thus creating individual Marketplaces, or trade Hubs.
This option would add a modified Auction House to the game, this is an experience akin to EvE Online. In which ports would have goods brought in and created by players, working in a similar fashion to the Classic Auction House, however these Auction Houses are not connected, creating true High-Low markets, making some Ports better than others, while keeping identity to zones. This experience allows for trade, and generally does not inflate while keeping the market competitive. That being said, this option does not give all items at your disposal as a option 1 would and would still require you to travel great distances in order to obtain some items, but allows for better Craft/Trade overall. My personal take
Personally, I am a fan of Option 3. To me this keeps markets competitive, and allows traders/crafters to really learn their craft and make a better profit for the time and effort they put in. It also keeps all Freeports hot and bustling, preventing a central Hub from completely taking over (though you will have some places better than others). It will have a stronger effect over the political game, and Empire late game. Thus it allows for more Pirating, and random events in the open to happen. Creating more content.
Anyway, goodluck. Thanks for voting.

I can't hire new crewmembers at Freeport since patch 11.4, and my company owns only 1 NPC crewmember which is also lvl 15+. So it's not the case when you can't hire NPCs because of 20 lvl 1 members limit.
Please fix ASAP. Thank you.

Get rid of the lawless regions and instead add multiple instanced freeports, and add an npc in the freeport town that allows you to freely switch between the instances. Make it very visible on your hud which instance of the freeport you are in, so there's no confusion incase you want to team up with friends in different instances.
Some of you might say that it defeats the purpose of a single shard. But it's the damn freeports. These are the starter learning zones where you can't build, can't claim, can't pvp and is supposed to leave soon anyway.
For instance, if you are at the North East Tropical Freeport #3 it should say so clearly on your hud, and at any time you can talk to an npc and get the choice to switch between the following: North East Tropical Freeport #1
North East Tropical Freeport #2
North East Tropical Freeport #4
More instances are added automatically as needed to handle the number of players (and removed when not needed). Not only is this a flexible, elegant solution, but more importantly the lawless regions are now normal regions again which can be claimed and built on, which means a lot more territory for everyone!
Edit:
To be clear, I'm talking about multiple instances of the same freeport in the same grid (in addition to the 4 islands in a grid). This would up the limit from 150 per freeport grid to potentially infinite.

I was in the middle of building pieces for a sloop, dock, everything. I log out last night after anchoring in the southwest southern island freeport of E12. I log back in and my raft is destroyed with no explanation of what happened. from what it appears as soon as I logged out the raft was destroyed. I am looking for an explanation, maybe reimbursement but I think that is not going to happen. Anyways thanks for making a great game, although some of the bugs are kind of killing it for most of us.
Below is a screenshot I took trying to put 2 and 2 together.

Hello, we were in the freeport and we were farming stuff to make a ship so we had it and we could just go to an island and make the ship when we get there, Well player came and stood on our raft that were overweight and they weighed it down so much that it sank, in a freeport... we lost about 30 large planks. this in complete nonsense because we cant do anything about it, because we were in a freeport after getting destroyed by a SOTD. if other players can just come and sit on your raft with a lot of weight and just sink it, what is the point of making it so we cant kill them for standing on it. THIS NEEDS ATTENTION IMMEDIATELY.

*message in a bottle*
So you stole a few coin, punched a few monkeys, and managed to slap a few planks together and sail off a freeport... Only to realize the outer sea is unwelcoming and will sink your dreams of being a pirate. The lands run dry of resource, the PvP sea is controlled by big name streamers, YOU CAN'T SPECIALIZE IN BEING THE BEST DAMN PIRATE DANCER IN THE FLAT ATLAS SEA!! Not all is lost.. -Undead Marauders- has a home, for you.
You need a place outside a freeport to call home. Where land cannot be claimed or taken from you. You want time to make your ship and produce 500 gallons of rum. K12, NA, PvP, is where you need to set sail. Seek out the Undead Marauders. A plan is brewing in the Lawless islands. You should be a part of it.
~ I feel a change in the wind, says I.. Seek out the flag.